#CBR9 Books 119-120: "The Unwritten, vol 10: War Stories" and "The Unwritten, vol 11: Apocalypse" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Total page count: 304
Rating: 4 stars

Tom Taylor is trying to find his way back to his friends, moving through a number of children's stories. Even when he's reunited with his storyteller father, Wilson Taylor, who by writing a popular fantasy series where the main character shared Tom's name, pretty much gave him the abilities to move through all manner of works of fiction, and his friends, the world is in chaos, as the Leviathan, the source of all the stories in the world, is gravely wounded. The boundaries between stories are thin and unreliable and it's difficult to tell what is real and what is fiction anymore.

Tom and his little band of supporters need to find a way to heal the Leviathan, but it seems as if all the wicked forces in the world are working to stop them, controlled by Pullman, the eternal adversary. To complicate matters further, there's the mysterious puppet-mistress, Madame Rausch, who seems to have her own agenda, separate from both Pullman and the Wilsons. In the end, it all comes down to one final quest and if Tom succeeds, he can save both our own reality and restore the balance to the worlds of fiction. If he's thwarted, thing could go very bad indeed.

War Stories and Apocalypse collects issues 1-12 of the miniseries The Unwritten:Apocalypse, which is both the final installments of the entire run of the comic, yet somehow also seems made to stand on its own. Throughout the graphic novel series, author Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross has collaborated closely, exploring the importance of storytelling and the nature of stories. What is reality? What is fiction? Is our world just a story told by someone else? What is it about humanity that we keep coming back to the same themes and motifs in storytelling through the ages? Are there ancient archetypes built into our DNA?

It's been about ten days since I finished vol 11: Apocalypse and I wish I could give you a clear and concise opinion, but I'm honestly not sure I got all the things that Carey and Gross were trying to tell me. I'm not sure I'm literate and clever enough to parse all the various levels of the storytelling that was coming across. I have studied literature at university level (but unlike my husband, who is naturally analytical and pretty much picks apart anything he watches, reads or listens to just for fun, I generally prefer to just consume my entertainment on more of a surface level). It's clear that in these 12 issues, Carey and Gross are saying goodbye to their characters, tying up loose ends and providing an ending. There's a lot of clever stuff in here, but again, I'm not sure I understood it all. Even after having recently seen Mike Carey talk about the ending at a sci-fi/fantasy convention, which made things somewhat more clear, I'm not entirely certain if I get all the nuances here.

Maybe, in time, if I go back and read the whole series closer together, this will make more sense to me. I am tempted to just make my husband finally read the final issues and make him tell me what he thinks. I frequently do better when I can bounce ideas off someone else.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Books 115: "The Unwritten, vol 9: The Unwritten Fables" by Mike Carey, Bill Willingham, Peter Gross and Mark Buckingham

Page count: 144 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Tommy Taylor has been separated from his friends and is desperately trying to find a way back to them. He also needs to stop the ancient adversary, Pullman, from killing the legendary Leviathan once and for all, but is waylaid on his journey when the various witches and magical personages of Fabletown attempt to summon the greatest mage the worlds have ever seen, in order to stop the menace threatening their own realms. Tommy is pretty sure he's not the person they're looking for, but it's clear that the remaining (and rapidly decreasing) citizens of Fabletown need all the help they can get, and he's not really in any position to refuse.

Many years ago, I was given the first volume of Fables as a Christmas present by my husband. I read and enjoyed the comic for several years, but eventually got fed up with it not seeming to go anywhere interesting (and Bill Willingham's statements that he didn't really have an end in sight anywhere soon). According to my records, Fables, vol 10: The Good Prince was the last one I read, back in 2008, after having skipped vol 9 altogether (not sure why, but I bet it's because I'd heard negative things about it). I didn't really start reading The Unwritten until 2010, so when discovering that volume 9 of that comic was going to be a crossover with Fables and furthermore that said crossover was disappointing to a lot of long time readers of The Unwritten, I pretty much just stopped reading the comic.

I just checked - it took me 3 years and 8 months between reading The Unwritten, vol 8: Orpheus in the Underworld (early August 2014) until I finally picked up and read The Unwritten Fables (late November 2017). If I hadn't recently seen author Mike Carey at a small fantasy and sci-fi convention in Oslo, talking about the final parts of his series, in addition to the fact that I have a LOT of comic books/graphic novels to get through by the end of December if I want to complete my Graphic novel reading challenge, I may just have let the final three volumes languish unread on the shelves.

Now, since it was so long since I last read about Tommy Taylor, and his friends Lizzie and Richie and all of the others, I didn't feel quite the same annoyance of being taken out of their world and being thrust into the Fables universe, where things have clearly moved on a LOT since I last read that series. A malevolent creature calling himself Mister Dark has brainwashed and married Snow White and is raising her many children, while they keep Bigby Wolf locked up in a dungeon and are systematically trying to wipe out all the remaining Fable characters, with rather a high success rate.

Summoning a great magician is their last hope, and let's just say most of them are not happy when Tommy Taylor shows up instead of some legendary saviour. Meta fiction is always an important part of the Unwritten comics, and there's quite a bit of discussion about what's real and what's fiction and whether our real world, where Tommy originates, is just another work of fiction (which in terms of The Unwritten being a narrative created by Mike Carey and Peter Gross is indeed true), but mostly the six issues collected in this trade are just rather grim and seem to have been an excuse for Bill Willingham (the creator of Fables) to kill off a lot of beloved characters without any serious long-term consequences.

I also much prefer Peter Gross' art style to that of Mark Buckingham, and it was strange to see Buckingham draw Carey's characters. I can absolutely see why this is the lowest-rated of all the volumes in The Unwritten, and don't regret having waited so long to read it. I'm sure it was a lot of fun for the writers and artists to collaborate on a project, but in the end it seemed rather meaningless and more gimmicky than anything else.

Judging a book by its cover: Peter Gross tends to draw really cool covers, and on this one, we get Tommy blowing a golden horn (this is a rather significant story point). The New York cityscape going up in flames suggests the danger to "our" world posed by the happenings in the Fables world, but of all the various covers for this comic, this is not all that remarkable.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 36: "The Unwritten, vol 8: Orpheus in the Underworld" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Page count: 176 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This trade paperback of The Unwritten collects issues 42-49 of the comic. It's been going for years now and is really quite heavily arc-based, so I wouldn't start with this one. It's a great comic, especially for anyone who loves books and reading. Start at the beginning with Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity.

Tommy Taylor discovers that Lizzie is not lost, she's just trapped in the Underworld, and he resolves to find her and rescue her. He finds a way in through an Aboriginal folk legend told in the Australian Outback, but doesn't exactly arrive directly in Hades, because when does anything run entirely smoothly for Tommy and his friends? He has to travel through a desolate wasteland, nearly getting eaten, being offered sexual favours in return for food by destitute and starving Austen heroines, accompanied by the unicorn. When he finally arrives in the Underworld, he can no longer remember why he's there. Meanwhile, Didge is trying to solve a crime involving a series of grisly deaths that appear to have been caused by zombies, assisted by a not too enthusiastic Richie.  There's a troubled young boy whose notebook may hold clues, but he's too terrified to talk to them.

Every time I review this, I find myself at a loss to capture why it's such a good comic, and why people should try it and find out for themselves. I'm actually going to borrow from my previous review, apologies for laziness, but I have a very big backlog of books left to review. "The Unwritten is a difficult series to describe, and I don't feel entirely up to the task of explaining just how wonderful and interesting and special a reading experience it is. Mike Carey writes about the nature of storytelling, and identity, and how stories shape the world and the things we believe in. Peter Gross' art is also a thing of beauty, and he manages to illustrate the issues in so many different styles, depending on what the story demands. If you love novels, and stories, and the art of storytelling, you should really do yourself a favour and check this series out."

The volumes tend to end on cliff-hangers, and in this case, the end heralds a cross-over with another big fantasy series, Fables, which I read the first ten trades of and rather enjoyed. I've unfortunately not heard great things about the cross-over online so far, and it fills me with trepidation. I hope the rumours are exaggerated, because The Unwritten has been extremely strong throughout so far, and I'd hate for it to go downhill because of an audience-pleasing publicity stunt.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 10: "The Girl with All the Gifts" by M.R. Carey

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

I'm actually going to use the Goodreads summary of this, because it's what made me want to read the book in the first place:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius".

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. 

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad. 

I don't usually read horror, but I made an exception for this book, because the blurb made it sound so very intriguing and because I'm a huge fan of Mike Carey's other work. I can only assume he's writing under a new name because this is a different genre from the work he normally produces.

This was such a great book. It's told mainly from the point of view of Melanie, although the pop culture literate reader knows a lot more about the girl, her little school friends and their situation than the girl herself does, genius level IQ or not. Of course, having no real recollection of anything outside the cell where she lives, the school room and the weekly routines she experiences, it's not as if Melanie can be aware of her real situation. She's quickly draws new conclusions based on every additional piece of information she is given.

There aren't that many characters in the book. There are some chapters from the points of view of Miss Justineau, Helen, Melanie's favourite teacher, who is also a behavioural psychologist and there to observe the very special children and assist Dr. Caldwell in her research. She knows that she shouldn't get attached to her pupils, or invested in their futures, as none of them are likely to face a promising one.

Doctor Caroline Caldwell is driven to prove to the world at large that it was wrong that she was passed over when advanced research teams were sent out to find a cure for the rapidly spreading fungal infection turning people into mindless, hungry beast, and destroying civilisation as we know it. She has no scruples using any and all tools at her disposal to further her research.

Sergeant Eddie Parks and Private Kieran Gallagher are parts of the military personnel stationed at the research base to keep the scientists secure. They make sure the children are securely brought to class every day, to the shower rooms once a week, and to their weekly feedings. When all hell breaks loose, and the base is attacked, changing everything, these two soldiers need to assist in keeping the other three safe and get them back to any kind of secure location.

My main complaint with the book is probably that only Melanie and Helen Justineau really get fleshed out properly as characters. Caldwell, Parks and Gallagher are just a step or two up from stock characters - the evil scientist, the gruff commander, the naive and inexperienced rookie. Yet the story is so compelling, and Melanie and Helen are such wonderful characters that it doesn't detract much from my enjoyment of the book. Melanie's journey of self discovery and self realisation, the really very skillful depictions of the dystopian future after an apocalypse and the strong bonds of love that develop between Melanie and her beloved teacher are what makes it especially good. I suspect this is a book I'm going to be thinking back to for months to come.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Books 84-85. "The Unwritten vol 6 and 7" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Total page count: 384 pages

Rating: Vol 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words - 4 stars
Vol 7: The Wound - 4.5 stars

This review covers volume 6 and 7 of The Unwritten, which collects issues 31-41 of the comic book. If you haven't read any of the previous volumes, this is really not the place to start, although you should totally read it, because it's awesome. This review will probably unavoidably contain spoilers for earlier volumes, so if you want to avoid them, skip this review for now.

In Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, things are coming to a head between Tommy and the mysterious Cabal that's been hounding him him and killing pretty much everyone he loves. Lizzie and Richie are still by his side, but they are worried that Tommy is using too much of his newly discovered powers without proper control. In alternating chapters, we see Tom taking the battle to them, ignoring the warnings of his closest friends, and we learn more about the Cabal and the sinister and deadly Mr. Pullman, and his true agenda. Tommy's battle is fraught with danger, and not without personal cost.

In The Wound, a year has passed since the dramatic events in Oxford at the end of the last volume, which finished off several of the story lines set up over the first 30 issues of the comic, and much of this volume centres around a new character, Australian police detective Didge Patterson. She's investigating a series of mysterious disappearances, believed to be linked to the rapidly growing cult The Church of Tommy. Tommy himself is on his way to Australia, as part of his world-wide lecture tour. Meanwhile, Richie has become world famous in his own right, having written a best-selling book. He's parted ways with Tommy and is trying to track down and get some answers from the ancient puppet mistress Frau Rasch.

The Unwritten is a difficult series to describe, and I don't entirely feel up to the task of explaining just how wonderful and interesting and special reading experience it is. Mike Carey writes about the nature of storytelling, and identity, and how stories shape the world and the things we believe in. Peter Gross' art is also a thing of beauty, and he manages to illustrate the issues in so many different styles, depending on what the story demands. If you love novels, and stories, and the art of storytelling, you should really do yourself a favour and check this series out. You should, however, start with volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity.

CBR3 Books 71-73. "The Unwritten vol 1-3" by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Publisher: Vertigo
Page count: 462 pages
Date begun: September 7th, 2011
Date finished: September 8th, 2011

Book 71 - Vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity - 4 stars
Book 72 - Vol 2: Inside Man - 4 stars
Book 73 - Vol 3: Dead Man's Knock - 4 stars


Tom Taylor is the inspiration behind his father, Wilson Taylor's hugely successful fantasy series about Tommy Taylor (very much in the vein of Harry Potter). His father disappeared at the height of his success, and Tom makes a living appearing at comic book and fantasy conventions. He's bitter about the abandonment, and feels that the only thing his father ever gave him was a head full of useless trivia about literary geography. Tom's life takes a turn for the puzzling and strange, when at a convention, a young woman, Lizzie Hexam, claims Tom is not Wilson's real son, and that he is in fact an impostor.

When he goes to Switzerland, to the villa where his father wrote the Tommy Taylor novels, and where Wilson Taylor was last seen, he ends up being accused of murdering a group of mystery and horror writers, who had been attending a writer's convention at the house. Tom is sent to prison, not realizing that the brutal murders were committed by Pullman, a sinister man who can turn people or things into text by just touching them. In prison, he befriends Savoy, a reporter placed in the prison to write an insider's perspective on prison life and Tom. It is clear that there is a lot more to his father's disappearance, and his own identity than Tom first suspected. He's convinced he saw the flying cat from the Tommy Taylor adventures sitting in a tree when he was arrested, and occasionally,  the magical sigil that protects Tommy in the books, appears as a tattoo on his hand. Lizzie Hexam also clearly knows more than she lets on, and appears to be in contact with the missing Wilson Taylor. Who is Lizzie? Who is Tom really? Why did his dad disappear? Who is the shady organization that framed him for murder, and wants to get to his dad?


I've been a fan of Mike Carey's for a long time. I like his Felix Castor novels, I think his run on Hellblazer was very enjoyable, and I think Lucifer is probably one of the best Vertigo graphic novel series ever, after Sandman and 100 Bullets. So when rave reviews started coming in about The Unwritten, I was eager to check it out. So far, it's great, and while the first three trade paperbacks are thin (collecting the first 18 issues of the comic), there is a lot of story development. I like the riffs on popular young adult fantasy, with elements not just from Harry Potter, but all sorts of clever things. There's obviously a huge amount of literary references in the comic, not just to fantasy, and Carey has interesting things to say about the nature of fame and celebrity and how we interact with books and other media in this day and age. The covers to the comics are all gorgeous, and the art by Peter Gross is very suited to the book. I'm eagerly awaiting volume 4: Leviathan, and can recommend this comic to pretty much anyone interested in clever, entertaining storytelling.

CBR2 Book 39: "Dead Men's Boots" by Mike Carey

Publisher: Orbit
Page count: 544 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: March 25th, 2010
Date finished: March 28th, 2010

Felix Castor is an exorcist, and lives in a world where the dead started returning from their graves a few years back, so he can make a decent living by sending the dead back to their eternal rest. Due to events in previous books, he is currently nearly broke, living in temporary accommodation and most of his old friends are not speaking to him unless they absolutely have to. He has to attend the funeral of John Gittings, another exorcist, or ghostbreaker, and feels a bit guilty, as Gittings kept trying to call him before his death, and John refused to answer his calls.

When Gittings' widow asks him for help, Castor doesn't feel he can refuse, and is shocked to realize that Gittings, normally so placid when alive, has turned poltergeist after his death. He is also contacted by a woman whose husband is accused of murder, only the murder bears all the hallmarks of an American serial killer dead for more than 40 years. The lady wants him to prove that her husband is innocent, and that the ghost of the psychotic mobster killer committed the crime instead. On top of that, he has to keep his friend's demon-possessed body from being released into the custody of a ruthless scientist, and keep from getting killed by persons unknown.

I borrowed the first Felix Castor novels off a friend several years ago, and while they didn't exactly wow me, they were entertaining enough. My favourite character in the books is not Castor himself, who reminds me far too much of another character Mike Carey wrote (but doesn't own the right to), a Mr. John Constantine, of Hellblazer (Vertigo comic) or Constantine (dubious movie starring Keanu Reeves) fame. I also keep mentally comparing him to Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, although the similarities are mainly that they are both male, both deal in the supernatural, and are rather sarcastic. No, the main reason I like these books is for the supporting character of Juliet, a succubus who tried to kill Felix in the first book, and has since decided to turn to ghostbreaking herself. She is not a very complex character, but is an interesting addition to the books, and entertains me greatly. She's also ruthlessly efficient in a fight, and I always liked women who could kick ass and dole out violence like a pro.

This book has been lying on my bookshelf gathering dust for at least a year and a half, and I don't know why I didn't get around to reading it sooner. It was a bit slow going for the first hundred pages or so, but then the plot started to thicken, mysterious people tried to kill Felix and I found that it was hard to put the book down. The plot is probably the most convoluted of the three books so far, but it comes together nicely in the end. Based on this book, I will probably be reading at least the next Felix Castor book, if not both, and I may not wait another year or so before picking one up.